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ECOTOURISM

Call for Bids: Management of Jeita Grotto Revamped

A committee of experts, created at the Ministry of Tourism's request, is preparing a specification document.

Call for Bids: Management of Jeita Grotto Revamped

A view of the Jeita Grotto. (Credit: NNA)

There are new developments at the Jeita Grotto. The Ministry of Tourism organized a tour on Saturday at this natural wonder located in Kesrwan, one of the most visited tourist sites in the country. It was an opportunity for caretaker Minister Walid Nassar to announce an upcoming call for bids to hand over the management of the grotto to a new company, following a specification document currently being prepared by a newly formed committee of experts.

This matter is of crucial importance for this natural tourist site due to the expiration, in 2022, of the contract of the former company that had been managing it since 1993, the Lebanese office of the German company Mapas. The operations continued after the contract expired due to the difficulty of conducting a formal bidding process because of the country's multidimensional crisis, but they abruptly ended about two months ago following the death of Mapas-Lebanon CEO Nabil Haddad, and because no successor had been appointed. The site is currently closed, which coincides with the winter break.

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The procedures for drafting a specification document by a committee of experts and launching a call for bids should be completed within a renewable six-month period, stated the minister during the tour. This committee of experts was created at the request of the ministry, Nassar said, according to a cabinet decision dated Jan. 14. This committee, according to the government decision text that L'Orient-Le Jour has seen, is chaired by the minister himself, with the head of the legal studies department at the ministry, Roula Nasr; three experts from Dar al-Handasa company (which offers its services for free according to the minister); an employee of the Jeita municipality; Joëlle Hajjar, a cultural affairs consultant; Hala Younes, an architect-urbanist; Beshara Mouannes, architect; and Nassib Ghobril, a financial expert as members.

A turbulent history

Walid Baroud, president of the Jeita municipal council, told L'Orient-Le Jour about the turbulent history of the site's management by Mapas, whose BOT contract with the state dated back to 1993.

“It was management that sidelined the municipality,” he stated. Notably, it received only 10 percent of the ticket price, set at the beginning of the contract at 315 Lebanese Lira per ticket, an amount that was raised to 1,815 Lebanese Lira by Ziyad Baroud (himself from Jeita) during his tenure at the Interior Ministry, which equaled a little over a dollar according to the old exchange rate of 1,500 lira (now valued at next to nothing since the start oft he 2019 economic crisis). He believed its share should rise to about 50 percent.

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Jeita Grotto to soon come under different management

The unprecedentedly long contract awarded to Mapas was due to it being extended at least twice by previous ministers of tourism. Following the last extension, its expiry date was set to 2022 instead of 2018. And management had been extended once more since 2022, due to a lack of alternatives at that time.

“It is true that the company managed to preserve the quality of the water, but the entire infrastructure is outdated, and the investments to improve it were largely insufficient,” explained Baroud.

According to him, the new specification document will bring many new elements that will allow better exploitation of the site and its surroundings, while respecting “strict environmental regulations, which are a priority.”

“We argued that it is necessary to develop the entire environment of the grotto and not just the grotto itself, in order to pave the way for complementary tourist activities in the area and especially to fix the roads leading to it,” he said. He also notes that the region included other archaeological remains such as two bridges – one Roman and the other Ottoman – currently unknown and which should be highlighted in the vicinity of the grotto.

The municipality, according to its head, should play an administrative role alongside the new manager. According to him, a tax auditor and a general auditor will now be at work, which had not been the case so far, paving the way for more transparent management.

“We will notably remove several encroachments on the grotto's domain,” he stated.

This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.

There are new developments at the Jeita Grotto. The Ministry of Tourism organized a tour on Saturday at this natural wonder located in Kesrwan, one of the most visited tourist sites in the country. It was an opportunity for caretaker Minister Walid Nassar to announce an upcoming call for bids to hand over the management of the grotto to a new company, following a specification document currently...